Who gets to eat the most, and why is it just or fair, and are they the same thing?  With justice you get what you deserve.  With fairness you deserve to get what they get.
      The pianist and I were sitting in the car the other day having lunch in Beacon Hill Park.  It was cold outside so we ate in the car rather than on the park bench by the flower beds.  Soon, the Mallards, man and wife, gaudy and plain, two striking looking seagulls and several funereal looking crows wandered around hoping for a free meal.  The crows were the first to identify the eaters in the car. When the pianist had the fill of her sandwiches she tore off her crusts to feed the ducks who were at first oblivious, but now the closest having been attracted to the car by the crows.  The ducks, despite their conjugality, began to vie with one another  politely and just ramped up the waddle to eat their fill.
        The seagulls rushed over, but the the safe distance in proximitry they allow to humans is further than the ducks do, so they were nearly out of range from the spoils.  Now , the pianist likes ducks better than seagulls, even if the gulls are admittedly more beautiful, but she is compelled to insist on fairness, called  sharing,  , not rewarding !  The result had her straining to meet the gulls cries with her throwing arm. The gulls may be beautiful but they are stupid,  so when food looms they sound off rather than shutting up and eating so when their colleagues inevitably arrived they had to fight them for the food tidbits. It's hard to call it justice when the benefactor has to strain to give you what you need and you summon your friends and then battle for it with them. The gulls scream , "Sea me, see me, see me !"  At least that's how it sounds.
        The pianist in the interest of fairness and accommodation took pity and hurled the crust as far as it would fly to them. I think this is concern for equitable distribution and a female characteristic arising from the matronly urge to meet the needs of the long and the short and the tall. I think justice would give the gulls zilch.
        The  cecophony from the seagulls drew more and more agitation from the crows who arrived in force,  but they have an even longer allowable safe distance from the attainable human food source. It was impossible for her to meet their need.  They looked forlorn as the pianist tried to break bread with them. They just couldn't outmuscle the gulls and couldn't cozy up to the humans like the ducks and the pianist couldn"t throw far enough to moving targets.
        Crows are smarter than gulls and faster than ducks, but if they want justice they are going to have to work at it like everyone else, use their brains and take risks to finesse the big guys! Or else eat alone what you can get1  Justice doesn't come without a price  !  For fairness you have to freeze the big guys !

  I often fished at Pedder Bay south of Lotus City, and the most productive  area was the mouth of the bay  around the Race Rocks where the sea life was in full swing , and the top of the food chain, the Killer Whales were abundant.
        At that time in the 70's a local entrepreneur  had developed a market for captured killer whales and Pedder Bay was used to create a holding pen for those herded Orca to be sold to provide  stock for marine shows throughout  North America.  Since our boat was moored in Pedder Bay often in the summer the whale enclosure was often a point of interest.
      Several Orca were confined in a good portion of the inner bay by submerged netting with surface floats that were well demarcated and the whales could be seen swimming at the surface of the pen. My friend Bill and son Robert and I were fishing one beautiful summer afternoon and I said to Bill who had not been to Pedder Bay before,  " Have you ever heard of the Corral of the Killer Whales before? "  " No ", he said .
       I told him we would drift close to it so he could take a good look.  On the way back from the fishing at the mouth of the bay I cut off the engine when we were near the pen so we could sit at our leisure and watch.  Big mistake !  I was not prepared for how fast the tide was running and since we were without power the boat slid gracefully over the netting and into the center of the corral. The whales had company.
       My boat was a displacement hull and the propeller was three feet below the water line. I could envision in that instant ripping out the netting with my propeller creating enough of a rent in the pen to allow several million dollars worth of whales make their escape.  I was on my own. Bill went to the cabin to make a cup of coffee, Robert was happy to be with the whales. The whales were content to swim around us in greeting but they may have thought the savior has arrived.
        A savior I couldn't be, but it crossed my mind:  Ruskin's Pathetic Fallacy. Realty would come forty or fifty years later to people when the Orca are revered for different reasons than Marine Show Stoppers.  I couldn't chance powering over the edge of the net with a running propeller so I started the boat engine at the end of the net and raced to the other side cutting the engine at the last minute and gliding over it , thank God. I struggled to hear what they had to say as I left and I think I heard ,  " Freedom ."  It's easy to now-a-days indulge in Pathetic Fallacy.

Out of interest and curiosity I attended an Alternative Therapy Conference on back pain. It was an interesting experience to listen to the diverse opinions and the conclusions with which the proponents of the various treatments  described their results. At a break in the conference for lunch, I was seated next to a young woman practitioner of a discipline of which I was not familiar. We engaged in a short conversation as she seemed very pleasant and was surprised when I told her that I was a medical doctor.
       She replied, " Pardon me for saying this, but why is it that medical doctor's handwriting is usually illegible? "
         " Well " I said, " We are taught to write badly. In the second year of the medicine course,  " How to Write Badly 201 is taught. "
           " How can that be ? "  she said credulously.  I waited for a glint of humour in those eyes,  but it didn't appear.
           " Well, "  I said, piling it on, " We can't be held responsible for what we write, since no one can read it but us. "
          "  Good Heavens , " she said,  " I didn't know that ! "  I looked in vain for any sign of amusement in that serious mien.  So up the ante was my desperate way to deal with the matter.  Surely in that stretch she would see that i was joking.
          "  Yes "  I said.  ' And in the course in third year medicine, " How to Mumble 301," will complete the skill set, how to communicate without doing so .  That way  we avoid any trouble such as   " you said this or that. "
         "  Well"  she said, as she rose from the table,  " I'm glad you told me that. "
       I could see that I was in deep trouble. She didn't get it .  My humour fell flat . To disavow it now would be disingenuous, and reaffirm what she wished to believe, even possibly in the first place.  I had just trashed myself and medicine in the face of an attempt at ill-advised humour in the wrong arena. I could imagine the furtive looks of disgust from the assembly of attendees in the coffee hour later.  I slunk away and listened to the rest of the meeting chastened in the shadows.
      As many of my loved ones have said to me before,  "Why can't you ever be serious for once?  "
      

    This week in Canada is Thanksgiving  Day which  coincides with the Christian Harvest Festival and arose from it. Our daughter asked if we would bring some of our homemade fruit wine from the cellar for the dinner. It's not rotgut but it is not stellar either.
     I usually serve that wine with family, but why is it that we take the people we love most for granted and don't often provide them with what we prize the most. Why should we reserve the quality wine for the dinner party for friends who we like, but do not love, and settle for less with the most important people in our lives.
      Because we can !
      Our three children,  Robert,  Anne and Ruth  are our blessing on this Thanksgiving week. Their unique gifts have given us joy that  begs expression throughout the year but becomes countenanced on Thanksgiving Day for us when it becomes apparent that their goodness and grace and care for mankind has been taken for granted and Thanksgiving day is a time to show it by bringing the best to the feast.

When my youngest daughter was twelve or so the pianist sent her to Simpson Sears to pick up a prepaid package that had been ordered. The mail order clerk asked for some identification and the only thing she had in her wallet was the membership she had in the Archie Club. There was no hassle with this from the department since a member n good standing of the Archie Club is deemed to have some status and good taste in men.
   Archie was cool but also beautifully naive; a happy characteristic that endeared him  to hundreds of young girls. They never identified really with the macho, sly, slick type. Certainly  the clerk would have recognized a fellow traveler. however young. Even though Archie struggled with the usual trials and temptations  he seemed to overcome them with his continuing good nature.  What's not to love?
    Certainly today the Archie Club membership card will not net you much headway with the airport or the customs office but it tells us where your values lie.
      Even more beautifully naive was Beaver. He was younger than Archie but his most endearing characteristic was his candor that gave comfort and reliability. You could rely on Beaver to say what he thought about himself. He was a normal. In my daughter's day the kids classified themselves as baddy-bads, goody-goods  or normals. Mine always described themselves as normals, but I was not always sure about that from time to time.
        The Principal once said to Beaver,  " Why do you want to be a garbage collector Beaver when you grow up ?" 
He replied, " Well you don't have to wash your hands so much,  and people don't mind if you smell."
      Beaver was not ready for Betty or Veronica at that time but I wager that eventually candor and transparency will also win the day over slick and sly.

!I bought a print awhile back, of the Camino,  a road  from France to the Spanish town of Santiago de Compostela.  The print was in a series of images in our library exploring the nature of roads. In my print , standing on the road, a trail really, was a  solitary lengthened shadow of a pilgrim supported by a stick. and the low sun, the sense of impending twilight, and the antiqued paper gave the road the quality of roughness and endless distance.
      A road always suggests a journey ;  leaving somewhere,  or something, or someone  and going to somewhere or something.  But the gist of the journey is the process,  not the beginning nor the end.  Not the future and not the past. The shadow on the road is fully on contact with it and its shape changes with the position of the sun on the traveler.  Our shadow portrays the nature of our journey much more than we credit.  The shadow looks forward and backward throughout the journey, leading and following, and foreshortened, watches the traveler from one side or the other as well, through much of the day. , the traveler footsore, and his progress is confined by the direction of the roadway.
          If it was the Road to Zanzibar  Dorothy Lamour makes with her friends, or the Yellow Brick Road , or the Camino Road, that  place. is where we are. This is where we are a step at a time and and moving  that distance at a step.  In my print  the solitary figure with a stick expressed by the shadow gives a feeling to the viewer of the loneliness of the roadway.  There is no Bing Crosby or Bob Hope to accompany Dorothy !  There is no Toto to accompany the other Dorothy ! There is no bicycle or automobile , just a narrow road in my print for which a  step is the only present and the only reality. My print could have been anywhere because  a road is a metaphor for life.
      I have never taken the Camino, the roadway to Santiago de Compostela and the Cathedral of St. James and I am now too old to do it, but a road,  is a road , is a road  and we all are on a roadway to somewhere and leaving somewhere with a goal of sorts.  We may find during the journey the shape of our shadow changed and sometimes learned from the roadway the real purpose was something else !
           

)When my father read the newspaper or a magazine in the olden days he often absentmindedly tore a corner or two or more off the page and swallowed it as he absorbed the news of the day. Cellulose is as indigestible as the news is, both in those days, and perhaps even more so today. Phytophagy (cellulose eating) can occasionally morph into a  compulsion to eat large amounts of indigestible plant matter unselectively and those who do are diagnosed as Phytophagiacs.
      The pathophysiology that may ensue leaves a growing mass of cellulose in the stomach that expands by accretion and becomes in time too big to leave the stomach and enter the more narrow aperture of the gastrointestinal tract beyond. This ball of cellulose and mucus is known as a Phytobezoar. A little like a wet snowball that rolls down the hill getting bigger and bigger until it can no longer enter the narrow mountain pass and obstructs any further travelers. Suffice to say this Phytobezoar is a result of a neurotic disorder and  becomes a surgical emergency.
        My dad never ate enough that accumulated, but as i reckoned back to my own life at home and his habit as I studied interesting psychiatric disorders in medical school such as this and  the equally colorful Trichobezoar (a Hair ball) ,  engendered in the same manner by eating your own hair, equally indigestible.
      My dad rarely read books so our books were unmarked. One always knew when he had read the paper or magazine however from the absent corners. It was like the neighborhood dog idly pissing against the tree without much thought, marking the corner of the neighborhood.  or Kilroy, here for a visit, marking with chalk  an a wall without much point except  to say that he was there.
       I confess I did the same corner munching as my father from time to time, embarrassingly, especially with books, tearing off a corner and  chewing it as I ingested the material and its content. It offended my friends if I had borrowed their book. Cellulose from paper is one thing but wooden matches, toothpicks, popsicle sticks and other wood and cardboard pieces are worse. Human beings are not beavers.The medical diagnostic  term "Pica" describes the activity madness of paint and dirt eating as a somewhat prevalent neurotic disorder in institutional patients. I am proud to say,  at least I only chewed and ingested  literature but, that's lipstick on the pig, paper  also qualifies as the madness of eating the describable indigestible. 
     When I first married the pianist she was horrified to see the ingestion of the corners of her books as I sought to read and ingest her interesting material. I realized then it was a form of marking, claiming ownership, territorial affirmation , however warped, but unconsciously and innocently done. A habit idly acquired is easily dispensed with in the interest of literary harmony when love holds  sway. I have never gone back to that bad habit.
      When my son, as a grownup became a bibliophile and had his own library I often read his books and carefully avoided eating the corners but often bent open the book spines for easier reading on the tighter new books. Again I was castigated for my destructive book tendencies. I am careful now to eat candy or popcorn  not paper when I read and strain to read newish books obliquely when semi-opened. I want to be good and avoid the sins of the father!
   
   

Having lived with the pianist for 64 years, our apparent differences in eating styles has remained largely unchanged over the years, so I asked myself to comment. It is also wise to watch someone eat before you consent to marry them as the eating styles display a certain reflection of their persona.
   I rush to say that  the pianist was an expert at food and menus inherited at her family home since her father was a wholesale grocer and her mother a scrupulous adherent to menus. At  their table, food was always a stable topic of discussion and healthy cooking was a premium consideration. In her family they ate and conversed throughout the meal. Assuredly since  eating and talking with decent intervals between chewing and swallowing for talking will minimize the risk of aspiration of food and the need for the Heimlich maneuver.
     On the other hand in my family of origin we ate, and then we talked. It may ,in part. have been we were all boys so conversation  gave way to eating. Once the plate was empty, we talked. This resulted in bolting our food but,  by not talking, the epiglottis remained closed over the trachea and aspiration was highly unlikely. I never remember the Heimlich maneuver ever having to be done in my family.
       The pianist and I are fork stabbers but i stab where the food lies and she gathers the food into the center before poking. Neither of us  use the ergonomically unsound American way of pinning the meat down with the fork so iy won't fly off the plate, and cutting it and changing the fork to the knife hand to scoop up  to the mouth.
       If we eat soup or cereal she spoons away from herself and I spoon toward myself. I often end up with a spot of soup on my front and crumbs of cereal in my tablecloth.
     She rotates around the plate eating in strict turn it seems one forkful of each of the four portions on the plate, whereas I eat the entire portion of each of the four one after the other. I suppose it matters little because they all mix up in the gut shortly thereafter.
   

This is no critique of the beautiful movie with Judy Garland, etc.,  but is only concerned with the published story of Frank Baum.
     The story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is , in my opinion, an exciting children's story with beautiful allusions of a psychoanalytic nature that has never been fully explored and never was apparent in the movie version.
        Most deconstructions written about the story have been centered on the political rather than the psychological or mystical aspects of the characters within Mr. Baum's story. As in any story of fiction,  it can be concluded that the characters always have some reflection  of aspects of Frank Baum himself. However moving along to the nub of it all, Dorothy is the psychological integrated self and therefore the least interesting.  The Wizard is a chameleon and therefore the disintegrated self !  The trio of Dorothy's co-adventurers are the most easily identified and have in fact the most interesting psychopathology from my standpoint
         Even though the characters eventually recognized the Wizard was a humbug, they clung to the crutch he offered. Or was he a humbug?  The analyst returns a bit of your own juices to you and calls it treatment.
He can't give you what you already have. He just puts a knob on your door to yourself. The successful analyst never seeks to alter the authenticity you own.
         Did the Cowardly Lion only recognized his courage other than though a magical drink, a given  placebo, a draft of courage.  He didn't know that he always had courage. He found that out when he realized that the Wizard wasn't a whiz. But wasn't he?
         Did the Scarecrow finally get his brains from a magical source?  He didn't twig to the fact that he was always smart until the Wizard took off Scarecrow's head and added a mix of bran and pins and needles. When we realize that what we seek is already inside of us, latent and awaiting discovery ; then the bran new sharp brain becomes  a useless reality a placebo !
          Did the Tinman get a heart other than a silk valentine transplant from the Wizard  using a can opener to  his chest? Nonsense!  The Tinman always had a heart but his heart was in the right place ; his head ! His attitude throughout the journey with his companions always told us that fact. He just didn't recognize it. He never knew that there is in everyone a place for the heart in the head.
           None of this trio realized their gifts until they combined their brains,  love and courage,  to help Dorothy to get home. We will never know what went on in the author's head. Maybe it's a mistake to deconstruct a story. Still,there are two bookends to any story.  The author and the intent, the reader and the understanding. What he said and what I heard. They may not be the same. It may not be important that they are the same.
        In any medical practice the power of placebo and mind over matter is seen over and over again !
        

An architect who designed and supervised the building of a house for the pianist and me in 1970 phoned sometime a decade or two after,  to tell me it was featured in a Legacy Show in a gallery in Victoria,  ie ,  "  "Lotus City" ! The house, although only 38 years old at the time,  was also declared a Heritage House earlier by the Municipality of Saanich. The house apparently broke new ground for design at the time in the 70's,  though in retrospect,  it wouldn't certainly have been everyone's cup of tea.
         I had friends that felt sorry for us,  others that said it looked like a bank,  but we ignored them since by then we had alresdy crossed the Rubicon. Still, the house  was interesting and evocative and after it was built the architect told me that he was most appreciative of the fact that he had a free hand thoughout the design and building process:  a situation he rarely encountered. The pianist and I were young and I , at least,  certainly felt at the time sufficiently naive that I had no right to tell someone as knowledgeable as an architect what he should build.
         We came and watched it  being built and growing every day and it became slowly our own so when we moved into it, we readily adapted and the house became our home and we knew every stick. A house is only a home when a heart beats strongly within it.  Mine did, and so did my sense that I had somehow arrived when the evocative house seductively took up my identity within itself.   We sold the house after seventeen years when our needs changed,  but I never forgot the house thoughout the intervening years as it became a statement of mine during the time we lived there. When we left and the furnishings were gone, I never returned to see it because for me a part had been excised.
         The pianist however went back to look at the empty house and as she looked in every empty room she knew:  "A house without a force vitale, is only a beautiful empty shell."
          The heart in any house, whether beautiful or homely, is what creates the home. The pianist shared my feelings about leaving it, but it became apparent to her as she toured the empty house that it was a corpse, albeit a beautiful corpse, without a heart,  awaiting a new transplant.  I wish now that I had the pianist's foresight to visit it once it was empty, so that I could write  "finis" to the sense of loss I felt at that time.
        The loss of course is never to you,  but to the house, since the force vitale is the force the house can never retain, and that,  we carry away with us. I guess we should always assess the relationships we create with our symbols. There is a danger  lurking for all of us that as times change, the visible symbol as a sign of an invisible presence can become an invisible symbol , indivisible, from oneself.  Or to put that sentence more plainly,  " You are more than any bloody house."  One needs vigilance  to maintain control of one's own orbit.